Originally Posted by Yngvi
Reply With QuoteI am near the end of this torrential read (it's about 80 pages overall, link below is to first part. I have tried to look for it, and it seems as if it's not been posted before):
Golden Silkworms in Pandora'''s Box - by Harvard2TheBigHouse
The overall theme is that the behaviour of RNA viruses, and the SARS-COV-2 in particular, is better understood as that of a quasi-specie swarm of variants. In simple, and probably inaccurate words, RNA viruses like SARS, or some types of avian flu, have the ability to replicate very fast, and generate multiple variants of themselves, within a host, a process that lets them explore quickly vast parts of their whole universe of possible variants. What happens to a traditional, single-genome virus, going through one mutation at a time over a number of generations, happens in parallel, and high-speed for a quasi-specie swarm variant.
The evolution and behaviour of these 'swarms' also lends itself to be studied with tools derived from basic quantum physics phenomena, or else with those of fractal processing.
The interesting, and sometime spooky, features of quasi-specie variant swarms help to explain some apparently puzzling feature of these viruses; like, for example, the fact that influenza clusters seem able to appear at the same time, in places separated by huge distances (a fact that is well known).
The first part deals with the swarm concept, and it's fairly heavy going. But it lays the ground for the second part, where discussion steers towards how intensive poultry farming became a breeding ground for scary avian-flu type viruses first, and to them becoming endemic later (and also, capable of jumping to humans).
Also, popping up here and then it's the concept that live-attenuated strains present in some vaccines (like the Polio ones) can de-attenuate themselves, and go back to full virulence, once again a feature of their swarm-like nature.
There is also a mention of how SARS-COV-2 seems to be very closely related to particular strain of avian flu, which seems to have acquired a furin cleavage site (mentioned some time ago on this thread) via several passes in a ferret population.
There is also some information about why vaccines against swarm-variant quasi-species are usually non effective, while social distancing quite possibly is (but still less than basic health-policies like vitamin-D supplements).
Overall, it's a very long read, at time a bit ponderous and repetitive, which requires some effort, but I would recommend it to those who have a couple of hours to spare.
IPB
